PowerPoint has always been a good tool for creating presentations, from school and college projects to client proposals and product launches. Still, the typical presentation has gotten pretty formulaic, so that people are often turned off at the idea of viewing another one. But Microsoft Producer, available for PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, lets you add a whole new dimension to your presentations.

With Microsoft Producer, you can craft media-rich presentations by combining audio, video, text, slides, and images into a single production. Try it, and you'll never be happy with a simple bulleted list again! Best of all, Producer is free, and it's fun.

Producer uses an interface reminiscent of Windows Movie Maker, with a timeline across the bottom, collections of various media objects at the top of the screen, and a pane for previewing the objects.

The first step to creating the show is assembling the various elements. To see how it's done, download Producer at www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/producer/prodinfo/default.mspx , then install and launch it. Click the Slides folder in the tree pane at the top left of the screen. Double-click on the Import Slides icon and import your PowerPoint slide show. Do the same for any video, audio, or still images you want to use. You're not committing to actually using anything right now; you're just gathering your resources together.

When importing video clips, click on the Create Clips for video files option, and Producer will split longer movies into smaller clips where scene changes are detected. If you don't choose this option when importing, you can right-click on a movie in the Producer window and choose Create Clips to do so later on. You can also edit a clip on the timeline by setting start and end points for trimming the clip or by choosing Clip | Split to divide it in two.

To add elements to your presentation, drag them from the collection area and drop them onto the relevant area of the timeline. Drop videos and still images onto the Video area, slides onto the Slides area, and audio onto the second of the two Audio tracks.

Click the Presentation templates option in the tree pane and choose one or more templates to control how the screen appears during the presentation. Some templates show only the video components of the timeline. Others show video and slides, or slides and HTML text. Choosing a combination of templates lets you focus in on the presenter for the introduction, for example, and then move the presenter off to one side as you bring in the slides.

You can also enhance your presentation with video effects and transitions that are selectable from the tree pane or menu. You simply drop effects onto the clip or image to attach them. To set the changeover from one clip or image to the next one, drop the transition in between them.

If you have a Webcam or digital camcorder, you can use it to capture video content. You can also use a microphone to capture the audio as you narrate your presentation. If your presentation involves something done on the computer or browsing a Web site, you can record this as video content, using the Video Screen Capture with Audio option. To access all these options, choose Tools | Capture. Once the capture process is complete and the files saved, they'll appear in the relevant area of the tree pane, and you can drag and drop them onto the timeline.

To synchronize the narration or video and audio tracks to the actual slide presentation, use the Synchronize tool on the toolbar. This tool plays your audio and video tracks while displaying a small preview of the slide show. You control this preview. Click to move from slide to slide or through the various slide effects, and Synchronize then places each slide on the timeline in the correct position. Once you've done this, you can adjust the position of other elements in the timeline to match.

To test the presentation, choose the Preview Presentation pane and click Play. Use the Pack and Go Wizard from the File menu to pack up the presentation, either to move it to another computer or to hand the final fine-tuning of it over to someone else.

When you're ready, click the Publish button. You can publish to a CD, your own computer, a place on your network, or a Windows Media Services server. Once this is done, the presentation can be viewed using a Web browser.

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